Touch your cars

Due to the hazardous smog from the wildfires, I wasn’t able to go outside much during the Thanksgiving week break. Despite threat to lungs however I did make it out to the annual San Francisco auto show at the Moscone Center. It thankfully rained on that Wednesday so the air quality wasn’t too awful, but it rendered the manufacturer test drives a bit moot. A Jaguar F-Type is nice and all, but being stuck in downtown traffic in the wet isn’t the best representation of a driving a proper sports car.

Shame; I really wanted to try the Alfa Romeo Giulia Quadrifoglio.

Nevertheless it’s been a few years since I’ve last gone to show, and combined with the fact I’ve been car-less since May, I was decidedly eager to be around automobiles again. New car smell may be poisonous but it’s intoxicating all the same.

I was most looking forward to touching the surfaces: the various contours on the outside, and the materials on the inside. The 10 years ago me would’ve been aghast at the thought of laying a finger on any part of a car that doesn’t involve actual operation; can’t risk scratching the paint or leaving oil marks on interior panels. I was obsessively compulsive like that, though that has changed. These days I highly encourage the tactile pleasure from interacting with the materials of a car: the smoothness of the paint, the industrial cold of metal trim, or the soft warmth of leather.

Because why rob myself of that experience simply because I want to preserve that last bit of perfection, which itself is a Sisyphean task short of placing a car in a hermetically sealed, climate-controlled box. Cars are meant to be driven and used, and the patina that comes from wear is to be honored and displayed proudly.

So I attacked all the surfaces presented to me at the auto show, and I came away with a one big realization: I can’t buy a car that isn’t from a premium or luxury brand any longer. The interior experience offered by brands like Audi or Mercedes Benz is leagues above mainstream marques like Ford or Toyota. The difference in quality of materials and how it feels to the hand is stark. You are pampered in a Range Rover, compared to merely functional inside a Honda Pilot.

Of course one would pay dearly for that privilege, but I think it’s well worth the price premium. The inside of a car is the part you interact with the most (as you sit for hours in traffic) so why not make that time spent as best as possible. Pay up for that open-pore wood trim, the Alcantara headliner, and the sound system with too many speakers.

Willing to pay for superfluous and vain extras in car? I am indeed getting old.

Except for you; you can touch me.

How good are the typical autobody shops?

On my bus commute to work everyday I pass by an auto-body repair shop that's constantly teeming with cars. I guess it’s always good business in that line of work due to law of large numbers dictating an adequate amount of vehicle accidents (the sheer number of cars in our little 7 by 7 mile peninsula never ceases to amaze). Like a well-oil assembly factory the particular shop takes in mangled metal and repair it to original condition in at most a few week's time. 

This is interesting to me because it brings me back to the last time I had a car accident and had to bring it in to a bodyshop. Thankfully that was almost a decade ago and fortune have since been kind to me in that regard. It wasn’t a particularly bad experience per se but the shop, in an effort to process as many cars a possible, definitely cut some corners in the repair. Outwardly the finished car looked fine, which is the most important part I guess? But the innards behind the repair wasn’t as lovely. 

I don’t suppose people would care about such minutiae as long as the car looks good and it drives straight. Can we rightly expect perfection when pressure is on the shop to perform the repair quickly so that we can get back on the road? Most drivers rely on their vehicles to get to work so after an accident it’s difficult to be without a car for an extended period. I’m sure repair shops get phoned many times from customers inquiring about progress.

Proper auto-body repair takes significant amount of time. Just look at Youtube videos of restoration shops putting in many thousand hours on a single car to get it back to showroom condition. Videos of DIY repair guys buying a body-damaged car and taking months to fix it themselves. No matter the skill-level of the repairer the time required to perform a stellar job is massive. 

Therefor I have no confidence in the typical auto-body shop "factories" where lead-time is measured in weeks and the aim is to get through as many customer cars as possible. I’ve experience with those results and while it may pass for the common driver, it’s utterly substandard for me. 

Think of why a car’s value is decreased after an accident; perhaps it’s tacitly understood the typical repair job won’t be perfect and there will be residual issues during the rest of the vehicle’s useful life. Compared that to say a properly restored vintage Porsche: no one would argue its former decrepit state decreases its value absolutely and permanently. 

If I am unlucky to get into a car accident in the future, I’ll take the car a shop that isn’t about chasing quantity but instead will take the appropriate time to do the job fully and correctly. It’ll likely take a few months for the repair but I can stomach that because my next car will not be a daily-driver so I can afford to let it sit. 

You would not believe your eyes, If ten million fireflies...